The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

Last weekend, Gretchen stopped in Ikea to get some things for the house. That seems like such a Vienna thing to do: stop in Ikea. She bought an apple cider-scented candle. We had a difficult time finding scented candles in Vienna. Most of the candles that claimed to be scented were not actually so. Ikea candles lived up to their claim, however. It was cloudy and rainy this morning when we woke up--a normal condition of Vienna when the seasons are changing. I think there might be more rain in OKC, but it's cloudy more often in Vienna. Since I tend to be a sentimental idiot (not to be confused with sentimental moron, which is much more embarrassing), I lit the candle this morning and decided to blog a few more of my Vienna memories.

In our bedroom in Vienna there was a television stand on the wall opposite of our bed. I looked around for a picture of it, but I guess we never snapped a photo of it. The TV stand hung on the wall about six feet up and was old. It was designed for an older television, not a plasma screen. We haven't owned a television for some time now, and didn't own one while in Vienna, but my Macbook fit nicely on the TV stand and we'd often watch movies or television programs. In fact, almost every night we were in Vienna, we would put on a DVD (or an iTunes movie) and fall asleep to whatever was playing. We went to Vienna with three or four seasons of Seinfeld and, while we were there, eventually completed the collection with all nine seasons. We watched a lot of Seinfeld. We also watched a lot of Scrubs, of which we have five or six seasons on DVD.

The first year we were in Vienna--the first year in a new culture is really difficult; for someone who's been through such an experience, noting the first year is significant and, incidentally, every other year in comparison to the first year--I'd watch Rounders a lot of the time. Don't let the movie fool you; it's not about poker. It's about friendship. I liked to watch Rounders because of the New York setting and the warm, amber tone of all the clubs in which Ed Norton and Matt Damon were playing cards. I have trouble sleeping sometimes, so we'd watch a disc of Seinfeld of Scrubs, Gretchen would fall asleep, then I'd put on Rounders. The first movie we bought from iTunes was on Christmas Eve. Our first Christmas in Vienna. It was Dances with Wolves. I wanted to watch a long movie. I couldn't find Dr. Zhivago, which was my first choice. There weren't a whole lot of movie options on iTunes at that point in time. I'd always enjoyed Dances with Wolves when I was a kid, so that's what I bought.

It just became a regular part of lives to fall asleep to something playing on the laptop. Even got where we couldn't fall asleep if there wasn't something playing on the laptop. But, we don't do that anymore. Just one of the changes of being back in the States. Just something that doesn't fit in with our lives here.

When Gretchen and the Queen Bee were out of town, I sat the laptop on one side of the bed and put on a Scrubs DVD on Saturday night. On Friday night, I went to sleep to The Big Lebowski. I know no one cares, or probably even understands, but it is something meaningful to me. It's strange, when I was in Vienna, I'd think about all these things in the U.S. and that would bring me comfort. Now, I'm back in the U.S. and I think about all these things from Vienna to bring myself comfort. Probably just reverse culture shock again. I'm sure it'll pass.